Exploring the practices of an awareness as it applies to addiction and recovery. Zen, Constructive Living, Taoism, and independent practice will change our way of living.in Mind, body emotions and spirit.
" The quality of your life will depend entirely on the focus of your attention."
A statement I first heard from Cheri Huber.
This blog is dedicated to it's exploration.
Bryan S. Wagner

Thursday, June 27, 2013

I think and finally feel that I am really starting to glimpse how much society and culture has conditioned me about how I view myself. I am numb over it.

Now this is not a difficult concept to understand. It's pretty apparent on an intellectual level, the emotional understanding is killing me at this point. I am starting to sweat this out. I know that somewhere I have pure awareness in me. I glimpse this "observer" sometimes. Usually when I stop thinking for a few seconds.

It happened today. I am in Chicago and went down to the boardwalk. It was really raining earlier, just pounding down endlessly, the sky was flashing and thundering every 20 seconds or so. I found a dry spot and sat down near some pilings.

It was hot, baking hot, and the kind of humid that when you wave your hand the moisture in the air gives resistance. So I sat baking and wet and watching and thinking.

There were some huge "dragonfly's" zipping around like insane helicopters. These guys were about four inches long. Maybe 10 to 20 at a given time putting on quite the air show.

I had this thought " what would these remarkable and beautiful flying "things" be if I had no "name" for them.

Right then and there my brain melted.

And.

I just sat and cried and watched these entities exist. Then there was a pretty clear, almost spoken thought inside of my head that said " What are you without your names and labels?" And I sat and sat and sat looking at the curvature of the earth, without a name or label. Just there.

Then my brain re solidified and thinking started again. It was overwhelming, the meaningless chatter of my mind trying to convince me that it is the voice of reality.
It's not. I feel that now and always will.

Labels, criticism, thinking about thinking, fear, anxiety, striving to feel something that I am not feeling,
hate, love, should, shouldn't, and it all keeps going on like water over a fall, trying to convince the construct of "me" that the thoughts are reality instead of vague pointers in multiple directions, confused and in constant conflict.

I am, but not the thoughts and yet "I" am those too. No separation, like wearing a mask, it's not me but me. Culture and society building on perpetual lies, not about who we are but who we are suppose to be. Billions of separate and yet whole realities. Being "taught" what's right and wrong, how we should look and feel, hundreds or rules and regulations that are all situational and purposely vague.

To cut through to clarity of being. The is of now. There never was anything wrong with me, or you. We just grew up in a very insane place where rules keep being injected and then changed.

We don't have to live like this anymore. It's a choice, a difficult one, but a choice non the less.

Addictions and bulimic behavior? How much of this is driven by trying with everything we can to be something we cannot be? Something that was "taught" to us, supposedly for our own good. Layers and layers of conditioned responses, thoughts, and feelings?

What if we are who we are when we stop being who we think we are suppose to be?

NEW BOOK!!!!

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Bryan S. Wagner

Hi. I am a writer, therapist, musician, lifelong student of Zen, lover of animals, people,martial artist, and I do interactive workshops on spirituality, awareness practice, Zen, recovery, remission, and the art of change.
For booking workshops or speaking engagements in the Michigan area. Contact: Changingspiritbw@gmail.com